This course explores a transformative and influential period in the artistic and intellectual life of Japan. The course begins in 1945, when defeat in the Asian-Pacific War inspired fundamental reassessments of the role the arts should play in understanding the recent past and imagining the future. It ends in the 1970s, when writers and artists reevaluated thirty years of intellectual and artistic revolution and reconsidered Japan's place in the world "after" the postwar. The primary materials are fiction, film, plays, visual art, and philosophy. No knowledge of Japanese is required. We approach the postwar in four pieces: 1) 1945 to the early 1950s, when artists and intellectuals confronted their support for Japan's war in Asia and the Pacific and debated the relationship between art and politics; 2) The early 1950s to the end of the decade, when they examined the society emerging from the return of prosperity, conservative political ascendancy, Japan's subordination to the United States; 3) The 1960s, bracketed by protests at the beginning and end of the decade against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, when radical politics and radical experiments in art went hand in hand; 4) The 1970s, when the end of high-speed growth and the narrowing of political possibilities fed a reassessment of the present and the postwar past.

Syllabi are available to current LSA students. IMPORTANT: These syllabi are provided to give students a general idea about the courses, as offered by LSA departments and programs in prior academic terms. The syllabi do not necessarily reflect the assignments, sequence of course materials, and/or course expectations that the faculty and departments/programs have for these same courses in the current and/or future terms.